Sarcasm aside (and that's difficult, given this story), there were three (yes, only three of the 32 total) members of the House commerce, trade and consumer protection subcommittee in attendance to ask BCS coordinator John Swofford some questions about the NCAA football championship system in place. Oh yeah, and they also threatened him with legislation that would prevent the BCS from calling their final game the national championship game if they don't "voluntarily" go to a playoff of some sort.

It was a not-so-subtle reminder that the leaders of the country are college football fans, too, and make no mistake -- the three seated at the front of a hearing room in the House of Representatives on Friday morning made it clear they're in favor of a playoff.

"It's probably better than a 50 percent chance that if we don't see some action in the next two months of a voluntary switch to a playoff," warned Barton, "you'll see this bill."

Barton was speaking directly to BCS coordinator John Swofford, also the commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and he was referring to proposed legislation that would prevent the BCS from marketing its final game as the national championship....

"It's in my mind a little bit like communism," he said. "You can't fix it. It will not be fixable. Sooner or later, you're going to have to try a new model."

This is all because some congressmen have decided that the country needs a playoff system for college football and are willing to waste taxpayer funds and abuse their power to get it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the BCS, and I would love to see a playoff. I think the smaller bowls would be a marvelous 32 team round, followed by larger bowls and ending up with a true championship game. But (as with many other things) it's not the government's job to make it happen.

Oh yeah, and the BCS is like communism, huh? Controlling speech, punitive taxation, gun control and mandatory indoctrination-like education isn't, but the BCS is?

Boy, if there were any real problems in the world, this would seem like such a small, insignificant thing.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Banks failing and the economy in shambles, the new U.S. president reassured a nationwide audience that his administration was putting America back on the right track.

"It was the government's job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible," Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in the first of a series of radio addresses dubbed fireside chats, "and the job is being performed."

More than seven decades later, Barack Obama borrowed heavily from FDR's playbook as he tried to slip as effortlessly into the role of comforter in chief. "Every American should know that their entire government is taking the utmost precautions and preparations," Obama said of the flu outbreak Wednesday night.

Balancing two wars, a creaky economy and — now, suddenly — a flu bug of near-pandemic proportions, this new president used his third prime-time news conference to assure America that its oft-derided government could rise to the challenge. At the same time, he sought to inspire citizens to help themselves rather than rely solely on Washington.

Yeah. It doesn't surprise me that the press is doing this again. Ever since he put his hat in the ring they've been comparing him to this president or that president. The problem is, they can't think anything to really say about him, so they talk about past presidents in relation to Obama.

Read the transcripts of FDR's fireside chats. You'll find that he spoke in plain, sometimes folksy language to methodically explain the nation's problems and outline his proposed solutions. Agree or not with Obama's politics, it's hard to argue that he doesn't communicate as effectively as Roosevelt.

This is one of my favorite lines. Bush spoke in "plain, sometimes folksy language," and that made him an idiot. Obama does it and he's just like FDR. Nice.

Of course, the comparison may not be unfair. FDR did more than any other president, to date, to socialize and expand government with his New Deal, which prolonged the great depression for several years. Maybe Obama is like FDR after all.

Is Barack proud of you?

On Sheepdogs

It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up.

Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

From the book, On Combat, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

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